


Renascence

by Phosphorescent



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Jonsa Drabble Fest, Jonsa Drabble Fest 2018, Jonsa Spring Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-14 20:38:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14144097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phosphorescent/pseuds/Phosphorescent
Summary: They are a pair of strangers who have nothing holding them together but the frayed, fragile threads of a tattered past.





	Renascence

**Author's Note:**

> This is my belated offering for the [Jonsa Drabblefest](https://jonsadrabbles.tumblr.com/post/170764268845/its-only-one-month-till-jon-x-sansa-drabble-fest) (Day 1: "stone by stone" + "Winterfell"; Day 3: "snow and stone" + "past"; Day 5: "cloaking"; Day 6: "weirwood" + "protection"; Day 8: "Alayne"; Day 9: "songs") _and_ my offering for the [Jonsa Spring Challenge](https://jonsa-creatives.tumblr.com/post/171668976446/jonsa-spring-challenge-2018-jonsa-creatives) (Day 6: "she hides away, like a ghost" from the lyrics of "Where's My Love", which was one of the songs offered on the prompt list for that day). …Look, I like to multitask, OK? ;-)

**I.**

When they first meet again, after years (lifetimes) apart, it is almost something out of the songs.

He looks so like Father—like Arya—like _home_ —that she can scarcely breathe with the sweet pain of it. 

He is a mirage, surely; a dream from which she soon shall wake, with nothing but the remnants of a bone-deep ache in her chest, bitter and hollow and dull.

If she dares close her eyes, she will be _Alayne_ again. She will be alone again.

Yet another shade, already half-forgotten.

 

**II.**

She hardly knows him, this brother-cousin of hers. And he scarcely knows her.

They are a pair of strangers who have nothing holding them together but the frayed, fragile threads of a tattered past.

Yet damaged as the two of them are, they are all that remains of a world gone by. Even Winterfell is gone, save for its foundations.

As she walks amidst the ruins of her childhood, she bites her tongue hard enough to draw blood. It fills her mouth with its coppery tang and she smiles grimly.

 _Better to taste Stark blood,_ she thinks, _than the ash which still clings so thickly to the rubble._

That is all that is left to them, after all: blood and ashes. 

Ashes and snow and stone.

 

**III.**

They rebuild, stone by stone.

Some days, Winterfell is too much as it once was for her to bear, the similarities only highlighting the differences. The losses.

Other days, it’s the differences that strike her the hardest.

It’s haunted, this place; filled with ghosts.

Some days they are ghosts themselves.

(Ghosts of who they were. Ghosts of whom they might have become. Ghosts of who they _did_ become.)

They are ghosts some days, but they rebuild all the same, the two of them. Step by step. Stitch by stitch.

Stone by stone by stone.

**IV.**

When he cloaks her and takes her under his protection beneath the pale weirwood trees, he does so with a Targaryen cloak… but it is she who gives him her name.

Remember: There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

And perhaps between the two of them, they have enough pieces—cracked and broken though they may be—to create one whole Stark.

 

**V.**

Slowly, they heal, even as the world around them comes back to life.

No winter can last forever, after all—not in nature, and not in the human heart.

Tender green shoots begin to spring forth from the once frozen ground and animals begin to stir.

Her womb begins to stir as well.

Their marriage may have been built upon duty, but as time passes, a deeper warmth slowly takes root between them and begins to blossom.

The days grow longer. Brighter. More temperate.

And then, one day, a white raven arrives from the Citadel.

Spring has come.


End file.
